Showing posts with label Vomit Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vomit Records. Show all posts

20 Apr 2024

ALBUM REVIEW: Reverence to Paroxysm - Lux Morte (2023)


Reverence to Paroxysm – Lux Morte

Mexico

Dark Descent Records / Vomit Records / Me Saco Un Ojo Records
 

2023 continues to churn out endless ever-amazing ‘finds’, even though we are just past the first quarter of 2024. Reverence to Paroxysm comprises dudes also serving time in other Mexican extreme metal bands like Blood Reaping, Castleumbra, Hacavitz, Apocalipsis etc., and I am limiting the listing to bands that are still in! These days, I would hesitate to use the term ‘supergroup’ or ‘project’; RTP should be regarded instead as yet another facet of their musical identities. 

I admit I was immediately drawn to this album by way of, yes, the super cool band name and album cover (and without having heard a note). Like my friend Alden also noted, the artwork/design has a pretty black metal or DSBM feel and look about it. The music/performances therein could not be further from DSBM. This is monstrous, hulking yet exquisite death metal rooted in OSDM but with a very pronounced incorporation of doom and frosty black metal aesthetics. One review I read quite correctly referred to Lux Morte as “atmospheric death metal”. The atmosphere however, does not refer to anything misty mountainous and Cascadian; more a cold, dark, murky swamp or forest wetland with dense choking fog. From which, Swamp Thing-style beasts emerge to drag you under the waterlogged soil, decaying leaves and branches etc.,……….WWWUUUUUURRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

The drumming here really stands out; fluid almost-jazzy but metal through and through, just like how Bill Ward’s swing served as foil to the heavy-thick guitars on the first six Black Sabbath albums. And finally, the part that nails it for me is the sampled monologue (from a film or documentary) at the start of the sixth and final track, “Care Data Vermibus”:

“…...my mind is going; I can feel it………...
I can feel it……………There is no question about it.”

Hence, my friends, surrender yourselves unto the dark night of the wwwuuuuurrrrggghhh!!! (Unkle Superion